LOVESalem: Living Our Values Environmentally in Salem.
Oregon-izing to Put People Before Cars

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Coal Trains and Selling Out the Willamette Valley

The Willamette Valley contains most of Oregon's population; it extends from Portland in the North to Eugene in the South. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyone who lives in Salem and environs needs to anticipate what coal exports really mean here: Selling out our future for the empty promise of a few jobs. Look at the states where King Coal has had its way (West Virginia, Kentucky, PA), and compare them to Oregon. Now, which is the better model?

Coal exports down the Columbia and up to Bellingham and down to Coos Bay mean the destruction of livability in the Willamette Valley in service of global capital seeking to maximize profits by externalized costs (environmental devastation, climate disruption, reduced property values all along the routes of these behemoth coal trains), with no benefits to the people paying those costs (us).

Coal exports are a gigantic step backwards for the US. Not only does it return us to the days of colonial status, exploited for our raw materials and stuck with the negative consequences, but it would help ensure a runaway carbon nightmare of the Six Degree C (11F) hotter global temperature average, which is pretty much a nightmare future in the best case.

Anyone with children or grandchildren or simply a modicum of concern for the future needs to realize what a serious threat we face from continued use of coal.

Bottom line: if the Iranians and North Koreans had a thousand 100-megaton nukes each and the means to drop them on any place in the world, that would only be a tiny fraction of the threat we face from coal. It's only the limits of our primitive monkey-based brains that make it so easy for us to see threats from other bands of monkeybrains and so hard to recognize the much more potent and serious threats we unleash upon ourselves.

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WORD

"Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us." (Henrik Tikkanen)

"Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends." (Lewis Mumford)Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay

If you are thinking a year ahead, plant seeds. If you are thinking 10 years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate the people.Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better. (Gov. Tom McCall)

Why This Blog?

Jan 19, 2008: LOVESalem reaches the web, bringing a vitally needed message to Oregon's capital city: We must Oregon-ize to put the needs of people before the needs of cars. This requires that we live our environmental values -- that we LOVE (Live Our Values Environmentally) Salem -- by working to stop the Sprawl Machine.

The Sprawl Machine is a ravenous beast that feeds on green space, close-in neighborhoods, and property taxes and that excretes monstrous, ugly road projects that pollute the air, increase mortality and morbidity, promote climate change, weaken families and neighborhoods, and help weaken the social fabric and civic participation.

The Sprawl Machine works by constantly luring its prey with promises that the problems created by cars can be addressed by doing more of the same -- building more lanes, more bridges, consuming ever more money. In other words, the Sprawl Machine promises that we can keep doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result this time.

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